I really wish the right would stop holding up as an example a terrorist attack against what continues to be one of the most diverse, international, and left-leaning parts of the nation. Especially when the example is used to justify limiting travel from every country except the country most of the perpetrators were from, but including countries which have significant immigrant populations in the victim city. It's borderline offensive and patronizing.

Not to mention rape victims... I know a few, and all of them attended or were wildly supportive of both the Women's March and the demonstrations against the travel bans. I don't think they'd appreciate their role in your analogy.

The discussion above is talking about general immigration laws and attitudes, not the travel ban in particular.

That said, my analogy is completely appropriate - and necessary - as there seems to be many who are unable to empathize with people who are scared for their safety, whether justly or unjustly paranoid.

First off, you used inflammatory language with the word "paranoia." Fear is reasonable; paranoia is not.

Second, your analogy is not apt because you cannot equate the fear felt by an individual with the fear felt by a populace. Only one person has input into the former; many have input into the latter and they all, as individuals, exercise it in different ways.

Third, you did not respond to my point. I was not dismissing the fear; I was dismissing our paranoid response to it. Fear of an attack is reasonable. Fear of "looking insecure" is not. They are different. The former would have done things like streamlined intelligence gathering and looked into the myriad causes of attacks intended to create a terror response. The latter bans nationals of a handful of countries--but not the one whose nationals were responsible for the Big Attack we so fear--as a knee-jerk response.

On the gripping hand, we won't do the former because we may just find that the terrorists look a lot different from who we think they look like.